Finding a title to go with this post has kept me amused for hours. My thoughts ranged from ‘Mao takes a bow’ to ‘Mao meets Coco the clown’.

Have you ever made something that you know is on a road to nowhere, but you just won’t turn back, absolutely sure that ‘somewhere’ is just round the corner? This is just such a thing. Really I knew from the start that this was going to be a wadder – as in wadder ya thinking of? It is a long sad tale, but to cut it short – it all started with;

The pattern. It was an ’80’s pattern and I had forgotton just how wide things were back then. The shoulders on this could fit an American football player. I took a couple of inches off the width – and it was still w i d e. But I pressed on.

But this still meant I didn’t have enough fabric to make it all up in the navy blue fabric I’d chosen. I would have to add different facings, cuffs or collar or all three. Now I didn’t want to repeat myself and go for white [even though I know that navy near my face does nothing for me], and I struggled with lots of different fabrics, cutting out pieces in different colours. No go.

I then decided [what was I thinking? ] of making it button to the top and at least have a navy collar. [the colour in the photo’s is much lighter, in reality it is a true Mao-navy, trust me!]

Enter Mao Tse Dhong lookalike.

Then I decided to add different coloured buttons to liven it up. Enter Mao Tse Dhong meets Coco the Clown!.

Now we come to the title of this post. All through this painful process through my head ran the words of Grandad’s song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang…….’From the Ashes of Disaster Grow the Roses of Success’. Not this time I’m afraid. No Roses. This little piece will have to go to the place where projects lie waiting to be reborn into something new………..hopefully, eventually. If anyone has any ideas what to do with this – that don’t end in ‘..bin’ I’d be interested to hear them.